Monday, 26 December 2011

Boxing day Barbel

After a hectic Christmas day i was looking forward to my traditional Boxing day fishing trip to blow the cobwebs away . Boxing day has been pretty good to me fishingwise over the years, it gave my first 20lb Carp around 20 years ago and numerous good bags of Perch and Chub ever since . I didnt have long today as we had relatives coming over later so a quick Chub session was to be the order of the day and conditions looked good . The river had about 18inches on it and was running clear, the weather, although windy was overcast and extraordinarily warm for the time of year.
The first spot i tried gave me a good few knocks on the tip and i suspected that small fish were the culprits . This was proved soon after as a positive pull resulted in a small Chub of about a pound. I continued to get the tiny twitches for another half hour or so before i decided that i was flogging a dead horse in terms of bigger fish so i opted for a move.
The new spot was very windswept and i was forced to sit in the teeth of it. I knew there was a deeper hole in the river bed here and that the Chub congregated in there during the winter so it was well worth braving the elements for.
I was surprised to not get any indications straight away as past experience told me that it was usually a pretty instant spot regardless of conditions. I continually trickled in tiny bits of bread to compliment the hookbait and soon enough began to get a few indications. Suddenly the tip wrapped around and a good fish was on .
It bore deep and it was quickly apparent that this was no Chub and on the light gear it was putting up a really good account of itself . As it neared the bank i saw a big flash of gold in the murk and my thoughts of Barbel were confirmed. It behaved itself pretty well and was soon nestling in the bottom of my net .
It wasnt a big fish at around 5-6lb but its the first time ive had one this late in the year and it made my session . I never bothered recasting after that as i didnt have a great deal of time left so i headed back to the Christmas excess with a fish-shaped glow inside of me.